Sep
28
The battle of Apple’s and Orange’s
Filed Under Mobile | Leave a Comment
Today Orange announced that it had broken O2’s exclusive deal to sell the iPhone in the UK. While O2 have known this was coming for a long time, and have built a very solid association with the Apple brand over the 2 years of its preferential contract, this could not have come at a worse time. Why…?
Over the last few months - and more intensely over the last few weeks - O2’s data network has come in for some serious criticism on the blogosphere, especially from iPhone users. The moaning can be summed up as “We have the world’s greatest mobile data device; on the UK’s worst 3G data network!”. My own anecdotal evidence and Ofcom’s data coverage maps [667Kb PDF] back this up. Have a look, Orange’s coverage is much better.
When this gets out into the mainstream press, together with some of the reports of system ‘meltdowns’, it could drive much of O2’s more informed business to Orange.
What have O2 got up their sleeve to fight back? Well, being a long term user of O2 and having worked as a consultant with them for a while (and therefore seen ‘inside the machine’) I can vouch for their truly exceptional levels of award winning customer service and genuine care. I know it’s not perfect but compared to the competition it is still way ahead. This is partly due to the decision early on to keep call centres based in the UK and not follow the outsource/offshore lemmings over the cliff to the frustrating service and language difficulties many experience using these facilities.
So what will hold the most value for the next tranche of iPhone buyers - not necessarily the early adopters this time? Exceptional customer service or superior coverage and network stability? I would like both, but being a geek would chose the better network every time. What about you?
Update 29/09/09: Now Vodafone are in emergency talks with Apple and have just announced that it too will sell iPhones - but not till next year after the crucial Christmas period.
Mar
10
Spotify the end of iTunes?
Filed Under Community, Innovation, Mobile | 1 Comment
Just as we started to get used to iTunes being the Grand Central Station for the majority of digital music purchases for the foreseeable future, barging uninvited into Apple’s party comes a quite stunning application called Spotify.
Spotify offers free and legal access to a huge library of music. All you need to do is create an account and download the player, available for both PCs and Macs - even the iPhone. There are other tools provided such as the ability to collaborate when creating playlists, and importantly for business they are now adding podcasts, but it is its simplicy that counts.
I have been using the application as I work on my laptop for a few weeks and find its ease of use truly compelling - it really does have an (original) Google like usability.
Mar
3
Sport 2.0
Filed Under Innovation, Mobile | Leave a Comment
If you ever wanted a better example of the case for pocket-able video to convey practical but complex information and insight, quickly and efficiently, look no further than the heat of the dying moments of the Cup Final on Sunday.
At full-time and with a penalty shoot-out imminent, Ben Foster the Manchester United goalkeeper instead of grouping together with the rest of the team for a morale boost - was seen walking to the back of his net and plugging in his iPod! My immediate reaction was to assume he was going to listen to some hard-core heavy metal or such like to ‘wind himself up’ for the shoot-out.
However it transpires that Ben was watching videos of how the other side took their penalties! (Presumably it was an iPod Touch or and iPhone - anyone know?). One of the backroom staff had put a video pack together for this very eventuality. Foster said. “It’s an amazing tool to have, it means you can brush up straightaway”. Manchester United won the shoot out 4-1.
UPDATE March 10th: Matt Dickinson reports in The Times today…
“The use of iPods as training tools by Manchester United does not extend only to penalty shoot-outs. The players are offered bespoke highlight clips, cut for them by in-house staff, that can be downloaded straight to MP3 players or laptops and taken home for perusal after a game.”
This innovative, albeit obvious, use of mobile media for learning raises great possibilities for parallel situations. Think - modern apprenticeships, engineering, health and safety, medical surgery etc?
Jan
29
In deep and personal - with Tracey Emin
Filed Under Digital Engagement, Innovation, Mobile | Leave a Comment
Tracey Emin is one of my favourite artists, ever since she won me over years ago at Sensation. I find her work profoundly prophetic. My favourite is her ‘Sparrow on a Stick‘ sculpture for Liverpool - a wonderful gift to the city that will grow in stature over the years. But now when I look at her famous tent ‘Everyone I have ever slept with‘ or ‘My bed‘, I see a 3D portend of MySpace or FaceBook pages (I can hear my colleagues shouting ‘Well you would James wouldn’t you!”).
Her article in The Independent today was wide open, honest and self-giving as usual. Within it lay a interesting story…
“Most mornings I wake up about 6am. These days, i have a flask of hot tea by my bed; I turn on Radio 3, crush three pillows underneath my neck and lean my head back at a 45 degree angle. I roll my eyes into the back of my skull, as far as possible. I then stretch out my hand, knowing that i should pick up my book but I always pick up my BlackBerry. I have this thing called the 6am club. There are a handful of people whom I can text or email at 6am, and they will reply to me immediately. Their thoughts will not be minor; they will be weighty, profound and somewhat philosophical. This is the morning time when the darkness is outside, but we still have the fantastic feeling of being alert in our womb-like nests. It’s a safe place from which to send out these deep thoughts.”
Mobile, personal, networked, creative and intimate - the sort of thing I was anticipating last year and expecting to hear first from someone using an iPhone, but here we see it on a BlackBerry.
Jan
17
Plane goes down - Twitter goes up
Filed Under Digital Engagement, Innovation, Mobile | Leave a Comment
“There’s a plane in the Hudson’. This tweet (for the uninitiated, a micro-blog post of 140 characters or less on Twitter) and the above photo taken on a mobile phone, flashed almost instantaneously across the globe within only a few minutes of the miraculous river landing of Flight 1549. The interest was so high that the main Twitter servers collapsed under the load of 500 view requests every 20 seconds.
I struggled to understand Twitter’s value although Stephen Fry’s excellent broadcast on the subject finally helped the penny to drop. But here we now have a case study of Twitter at full power.
Ironically, the cause of the catastrophic engine failure was a large flock of birds!
Dec
11
Living in your pocket - update
Filed Under Innovation, Mobile | 2 Comments
Six months ago against most expectations Apple changed its iPhone development to an ‘open platform’. I said at the time that I couldn’t wait to see what ingenious ideas the developer community out there was going to cook up for us. So Where have we got to?
Well there are now over 10,000 applications to download ranging from Spore (a cut down version of the popular console game) to Shazam (identify and purchase any music by pointing your iPhone at the loudspeaker). There are business productivity tools e.g. OmniFocus, and helpful connection widgets to the likes of Facebook and the WordPress blogging platform, and of course a range of RSS newsreaders. This rapid success has left all other phone manufacturers gasping for breath.
Of course there is bucket loads of dross but the explosion of creativity is fast turning the iPhone into not only one of the most popular games consoles, but also into one of the most fun pieces of technology on the planet.
Even so this is very early days, and we are still primarily in a process of absorbing existing web innovations on to the platform. I am still waiting for a genuine break through mobile application to emerge - one that could only exist on a platform like the iPhone. Something that can harnesses the collective brainpower of teams and groups in a unique, personal and pocket-able way - and geo-location isnt it! I think it is only a matter of time.
(If you think there is something out there I have missed then please let me know.)
Sep
15
Global innovation vs. mass production
Filed Under Community, Digital Engagement, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, Mobile | Leave a Comment
“We are what we share” or so Charles Leadbeater would have us believe. His new book WE-THINK shows us how radically the internet is changing the way we work.
Human beings have networked since our species emerged, but suddenly there is now a device that can redefine ‘the network’ and how we interact with each other - right across the planet. We are still at the early stages of working this all out, but it is clear that the new culture is all about using the internet to collaborate, to think of ideas together, to share information and knowledge and to do that in a way that enables us to create things - such as an open encyclopaedia e.g. Wikipedia, open source software e.g. Linux, or citizen generated news services e.g. OhmyNews in Korea.
Charles predicts disruption ahead as large command and control hierarchical organisations clash with those growing up with the networked lateral economy, where people are used to looking to each other to get information and share openly. He sees we are moving out of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s consumer world of ‘I want: I want’ into a new ‘I can: We can’ culture, based on the web’s everyone can participate and have a go ethic. Good stuff eh?
Perhaps most importantly, he sees the imminent explosion of the mobile internet across developing countries as a real sign of hope, predicting radical new forms of organisation emerging as creative people and communities harness the new technologies to help solve their problems in undreamed of ways.
Jun
24
Living in your pocket
Filed Under Innovation, Mobile | 2 Comments
It was the launch of the 3G iPhone 2 this week. It looks almost identical to its predecessor but much faster with ‘HSPDA broadband’. The only surprise was the almost ‘buy one; get one free’ price cut. Far more significant was what didn’t happen - the launch of the new iPhone 2.0 software - which many commentators are saying is little less than the arrival of the “next computing platform”.
Amazingly, the software that runs iPhones is very similar indeed to that on your laptops or desktops. It is a full-on computer operating system - in fact a good one - Apple OS X. In March, Apple surprised many by opening it up for 1000’s of external programmers and companies to make their own applications.
In the early 90’s I was quite critical of Apple, but recently they seem to be producing quite astonishing and disruptive creative jumps, and the potential for all sorts of highly collaborative, creative and personalised tools is apparent here again. The move of powerful computers off our desks and into our pockets will bring new meaning and opportunity to mobile and virtual working - it should be fun. I can’t wait to see what ingenious ideas the developer community out there is going to serve up for us.
So when the iPhone 2.0 software is released in a couple of weeks an important new phase of the mobile revolution begins.